Dreamer

Everyone dreams
Everyone sighs
When all dreams are

Just ifs and whys

But the big dreams are
Reserved for just a few
Those insane dreamers

Like me.. and you??

confetti of your mind

Pick up your thoughts
Shuffle them
Toss them around
And see how they fall
Upon common ground.

Sprinkle your feelings
In the spaces between

Observe...

How do you feel
About them now
Laid about
Like confetti

Would you still defend them with your life?

Pick up the ones you would

And do with them as you should.
As for the others, leave them behind

They're just the confetti of your mind.

Dream

Spend some life on your dreams now
Quick, before they die
Dreams need to breathe too
Just like you
Do it today
Nourish a dream or two
Before they fly
Away

Murder song

my fingers
touch your throat
and you sigh
my mind divides
i want to touch you
or throttle you
my fingers itch
for an answer

you say something
sweet
my heart melts
our lips meet
your teeth draw blood
my fingers tighten
as the red turns to gray
yet again...

Anonymity

Do not tell me your name
Share with me instead your breath
The whispering of your voice
In a million different keys

Infuse me with your self
Do not cheapen this act
By giving it a label
Do not call it love
Or lust, or any of the myriad
Millions of terms we use

To make ourselves feel better

Share in my guilt and my fear
Be anonymous with me
Rise with me over common bonds
And be with me, in me 

Let this moment be our forever

Moments...

Long slow kisses that never end
and poetry by the fireside
are sorely missed...

Fingers interlinked
As we walk through the rain
laughter sprinkled through the air

by random thoughts expressed...

Cheeks that have been kissed
by sudden flushes, sudden charms
the sudden intertwining of arms

and other happy accidents of chance

as serendipity sets in
and joy pervades
our mutual worlds
in mutual whorls

of colour

i wonder
in wonderment
about those moments

and where they went...

Love-worn

I've loved too many women, too hard,
And each took too much, leaving a little hole
In my once indestructible heart
Till it looked as it does now - a begging bowl...

So here's my plea to the girl that comes next:
'Oh, you of the womanly wiles...
Would you, could you, instead

Of taking, fill my heart with your smiles...'

Talk to me with your touch

Talk to me with your touch
Speak to me without words
Words tire me
They say nothing
Let your lips
echo in my being
with silent speech
it's time to let sound rest
and speak in other tongues

What you do not voice makes me tremble

Let me worship at the altar of your skin now

Hush...

In the arms of the night...

I am the one who writes
Writes in the arms of the night
3am songs, doused in dew
Lubricated by alcoholic brews
Poor substitute for a muse
But they’re all I have
For inspiration...

Love Paean

the shape of your fingerprints burnt into my skin
each ring is a whorl-pool to capture me in...

Dawn

I'm enamoured with the dawn
The red in the skies
Lends wings to my eyes
And lets my imagination roam
Eclipsing the morning gloom
Of overcast lives...

Ode to darkness

I'm flying with the moonlight in the face of the rain
I'm riding the wind, treating the darkness with disdain
I'm singing to waves above whose clamor my voice cannot rise
I'm consecrating my songs to stars that live beyond our skies

I know not much more than love, and laughter and longing
The yearning for freedom and the need for belonging
But it's all I need on my journey to the other side of midnight
The darkness is mine, it's the blindness that gives me my sight.

Sparklin'

I was complimented on my sparkling wit
I said it must be the bubbly in my soul
For I was born with a Champagne sorta Spirit ;-)

Cripple on a crutch

I'm now a cripple on a crutch,
It's an experience overrated,
but not by much
No swinging legs, no toes that touch
How one muscle pull, one calf in trauma,
Can cause such a hell of a lot 'a' drama
Is rather unexpected,
Calves are deceptive
Walking without one is like writing without grammar.
I'm waddling like a penguin now,
Swaying from side to side
No dancing, leaping, jumping
At least my tongue's not tied!

The Trudge for Fudge!

I'm searching for moments magical,
amidst the dreariness of daily drudge
Wondering if life isn't tragical
Without the equivalent of hot chocolate fudge

Bike in the rain

Pouring Rain, Motorbike, Highway
No way quite like this for a Joy-way
To drive away those blues
Who needs a woman or a muse
On a bike in the rain on the highway :-)))

Tears

Tears can burn like fire too
When sprinkled across open wounds
Why fertilise all your fields of pain
With raindrops from your eyes
And the wasted breeze of sighs

Aftermath

As the world around us shrinks
And you lie within arm's reach
The spaces between us grow
And can hardly be breached...

Is the present really pleasant

Is the present really pleasant,
And does the past last?
Last longer than yesterday, anyway?

Can you treasure pleasure,
Or foment the moment,

Prolong your pleasure and play?

Is such a question pedestrian,
Or do you debate your fate?
Or does it not matter, and do you prefer

To live your life out in shades of grey?

Brillo Pad

She said my body felt like a brillo pad
I said her head was what felt like that
Every time i rubbed myself against her wit
I felt like I should just get up and quit

Honesty

I wrote to her to say I didn't care any more,
She called me that night and cried,
I told her then
(cos she'd left me for a friend),
I really wished that she had died.

She started screaming and cursing like a fishwife,
Women can't bear honesty,
I've learnt,
Too late in life.

And where is our revolution?

And where is our revolution?

We protested against auto-rickshaw drivers yesterday

We say

And the day before

We turned our lights off for an hour

And only last week

I donated to Greenpeace

I buy from farms that are organic

And you know farmer suicides

Don't affect those prices

So all's well with my world I say

What did you want to protest about anyway?

And where is our revolution?

We cry and wail

But voices aren't raised

Cos we're too scared

Not of the government

Not of the policemen

Or the boogeymen

But of what our neighbour will think

We're good people you see

Good sorts don't protest

They complain and they whine

THey make a little fuss

But not much

Cos they're too worried

About what the neighbours will say

And where is our revolution

In the voices upraised

Against people from the neighbouring state?

Against the Gorkha union

The refugees from Bangladesh

Who were just looking for a place to stay

In the voices of the good Marathi citizens

The denizens

Of Dadar

Who just want racial purity on the streets

Or the Kannadiga or the Tamil

Whose tunes will resonate only to the heart beats

Of their own language....

And where is our Revolution

When dal prices and onions make us weep

ANd the farmers take to the streets

Because of urbanisation

Geneticisation

Modernisation

When what the Ambanis eat

Is televised

Live

On national TV

And the starving kids

Are not news any more

NO

Now it's budget housing

Land for ever Indian man

You're supported by your local bank

You just gotta borrow a crore

Or maybe just a little more

Get in over your head

Trust your government

They're the Commonwealth

They'll play games

Learn financial jugglery

While you struggle to eat

And pay for their pleasure with your penury.

And where is our revolution?

In autorickshaw strikes and non-tv days

and let's just turn the lights off for tonight I say

We'll buy organic

and not let our taps drip

And go home feeling oh-so hip

Cos we support Greenpeace

And hate people who club baby seals to death

But reelect our government

Bring them back

Cos farmers dying

is just suicide

and onion prices

Aren't really a crisis

Did you see how high the sensex went today?

And where is our revolution?

Where are our voices?

Where is the change we want to be

Is it just drowned in the enormity

Of our daily lives

And our petty little fights

Over who got a bigger bonus

Isn't the onus on us

Or is it all just gonna be okay

Let the politicians play

What can I do anyway

I'm just one person

There's a billion more where I came from

And there's a never-ending supply

Who cares as long as I can get high

My revolution is on the brink

Of exploding with another drink

I'll go home and beat my wife

And put an end to domestic strife

And tell the children to can it

If I don't like it I can ban it

And any protests they make are useless anyway

Cos thats the way the world works

And if you don't like it you can lump it

Learn to get along

That's your theme song

You'll grow up soon

And learn before long

That protest only works in song.

Wordflay

is flaying his soul with words...

Game

I'm playing that age-old game
On the edge of darkness
Blowing each spark to a flame

And it burns...
My soul
As it seeks the light

That darkness denies

:-)

Secret smiles rise unbidden at every thought of you...

Almost Haiku

is playing games with the sun
a losing proposition
but oh! what fun!!

If I could

I would take the night
Wrap it around your shoulders
If I could
I'd watch the stars glint against your skin...
I would take those city lights
That mesmerise
And wind them in your hair
If I could
I would
Take your heartbeat
And make it my song for a while

Dance with you day and night
If I could
Bring your darkness into light I would...

On the cliff edge of his dreams

The little boy
Stands on the edge
And prays
He strays
His thoughts taking wing
With butterflies from off the grass
His laughter swoops
On little wings
His prayers are forgotten
Lost and left behind
In scuffed and broken footprints
And will be covered up
When the grass grows back
On the cliff edge of his dreams

writing on the sand

He’s writing on the sand
waiting for the waves
to rearrange what he says

Song of me

I'm a-feelin like a tin pan alley song,
The words are all right but my music's all wrong.
Every other note tends to slide
My plectrum plays like a gong.
And each f-sharp on my blues harp
Is crying like a pig on a guillotine
And every call for freedom
Is just a silent, wordless scream...

But the words are right,
Oh yeah, they're so right
That I just can't help singing this song
So, tell me true, would any of you
Perhaps - you know - like to sing along?

Love games

I've learnt all the games of love
I've played those games of hate
I've been broken by your words
And felt my whole world quake
I’ve known the joy and ecstasy
Yeah, done all that give and take

For just one kiss,
No more than this
I’ve stopped being rogue and rake
And I don’t know why
A tear or a sigh
Can cause my earth to shake
Even when I know
That love you show
Is just put on, it’s fake

And if there is a lesson I have learned
It’s that
I've been hurt by thirsts that slaked
I've felt every sting and barb
You threw at me, and stayed
I know that love is my disease
I'd burn willingly at your stake
For just one kiss
No more than this
You'd have me on a plate.

Creed

Freedom is a motorcycle on the highway
They say
And I have found it to be true
That when the wind sticks to me like glue
A feeling very like ecstasy
Enters me
And though I do not pray
Nor believe
In idols or Gods
And though I shun
Religion
I do have a faith
I follow a creed
The highway is my home
And a motorcycle on the open road
Will always set me free...

Words

I was lost in the silences
Till words found me
They grew me, raised me, shaped me
The words made me

Reverie

against the
bleak
dark canopy
of night
the stars twinkle
their merriment
and I cannot help
but smile
as i watch
my past
dissolve
into starlight